The Red-Haired Handful
by smeltlikesafety
Summary: Reno's sick, and someone's gotta take care of him. It's just his luck that that person happens to be Rude.


**AN: I'm sorry I've been gone for so long, I've just been so busy IRL. I'll probably be posting regularly only late this year, when I'm finally able to come back on FFN.**

**This wasn't a prompt, but I had this idea because I wondered how the Turks would handle a sick Reno.**

**Must be really fun.**

**This has been on hiatus for like, over a year, just sitting in my harddrive. I really hope you enjoy! **

* * *

Rude didn't even bother knocking, knowing Reno had broken a leg among other broken things. In fact, Rude would be assuming Reno would have had the courtesy to answer the door in the first place.

Assuming wrongly, that is.

Instead, Rude decided to just enter. He grunted, as if a warning to the Reno in the bedroom that he was about to barge in, and tried the handle. Somewhat unsurprisingly, it gave.

Rude looked down Reno's hallway, littered with dirty laundry and clean laundry and the remote control to the TV, empty beer cans and empty takeout boxes among other junk. They were all just scattered around the floor, as if AVALANCHE had just ran through Reno's hallway holding a pyjama party. But Rude knew better than that. He calmly closed and locked the front door with the spare key sitting next to a long-dead cactus plant on the drawer next to the door, before making his way to the bedroom.

_Home stay,_ Tseng had said over the phone. _Just make sure he doesn't do something stupid and die,_ the cool voice of their boss had informed Rude, before the click signaled the end of the conversation.

Rude was greeted with a rare sight – Reno without his hair tied up. The fiery red strands cascaded over his shoulders to rest somewhere around his waist, as the redhead leaned against the headboards, cigarette loosely held in his right index and middle fingers. His chest was heavily bandaged, as was his right leg, and right eye, and groin. Rude inwardly smirked.

"Shaddap," Reno snapped even though Rude hadn't said anything, before throwing a half-eaten apple at Rude's head. Rude dodged easily, before silently making his way to Reno's bedside and seating himself on a moth-eaten couch next to it.

Rude grabbed the doctor's letter from the tabletop, leaving Reno to blow smoke rings obscenely in his face and cackle loudly whenever he blew one that Rude's head successfully went through. "Read it to me, partner," Reno yawned from the bed, stretching as much as his broken and beaten body would allow him. "What, ya expected me to read it myself?" He then added, while Rude sat unmovingly on the couch. Rude didn't answer, instead putting the letter under the light of the bedside lamp, and started to read.

"Patient: Reno Sinclair, List of Injuries: Fractured femur-"

"What the fuck is a fe-"

"-hairline crack on radius, bruised eye tissue, dislocated shoulder-"

"Fucking flesh wounds-"

"-two broken ribs, slight internal bleeding, stitches on chest, face, hip, to be put on sedatives-"

"Sedatives? What the fuck for? I don't-"

"-for four days, longer if necessary. Allow ample bed rest and-"

"Bed rest? What am I, a fucking potato?"

"-restrict movement as much as possible, do note-"

"-Rude, I'm not a-"

"-possible rebound of fever, hallucinations-"

"Rude-"

"-and mood swings-"

"RUDE!" Reno yelled, his one visible eye glowering with liquid fire, lips pulled back to bare his teeth in a silent snarl. "I'm not a fucking girl, ya know, so stop screwing around and get me some beer." Reno then tossed his hair over his shoulder, before tossing his smouldering cigarette at Rude's head. It hit the top of Rude's scalp and bounced off, before landing somewhere in the carpet.

Reno watched the trajectory of the cigarette, before freezing for a moment, and then proceeding to burst out in a fit of giggles and gigglesnorts that threatened to tear his stitches at the seams. He continued giggling and wiggling as Rude stood and reached over to tuck him in securely, before getting up to head to the kitchen to get Reno a glass of milk.

By the time he got back, Reno was fast asleep.

Rude woke at roughly 3AM to heavy breathing near his ear, and nearly rolled off Reno's couch in an attempt to behead the intruder. He stopped when he spotted glassy green eyes, impossibly wide and a few inches from his face.

"Who are you?" Reno whined, leaning heavily on his crutch in the middle of the hallway. His hair was a mess, tangles framing his face and trailing down his back, and his pyjama bottoms looked in danger of falling off his hips any moment. "Why don't you have hair?"

Rude was on his feet in a moment, trying to guide a very disoriented Reno back to bed. _Selective temporary amnesia, _the letter had explained.

"No!" Reno flailed and tried to shield himself from Rude, reaching a hand up to pinch Rude's cheek and try to stuff his fingers into Rude's ears in quick succession. He let go of the crutch in the process, and continued sobbing and whining as he crashed into the floor at Rude's feet. His staccato yelps got increasingly louder and louder as the _stranger_ manhandled him and carried him back to the bedroom. Once there, Rude conducted a quick search for any reopened wounds or torn stitches, before tucking Reno in for the second time and turning off the bedside light.

Not even an hour later, Rude was awoken once again, this time by wails and sobs emanating from the bedroom. Rude rushed to the bedroom, only to see a patch of red hair illuminated by the moonlight shining in through the window. The redhead in question was huddled on the floor next to the bed, one hand on his head, looking at the window with a horrified expression.

When Rude got within five feet of him, Reno started screaming and screeching for all he was worth, pointing at the bahamut on the windowsill.

Rude, for the life of him, couldn't see the bahamut in question.

But Reno kept screaming anyway, while tears crept down his cheeks in streams, so Rude grabbed Reno's crutch and poked and struck at the imaginary bahamut for a full half hour, while Reno cowered in his corner and shrieked instructions at Rude.

By 6AM, Rude was in the queen-sized bed with Reno, getting tired of having to get up from the couch and check the bedroom anyway. Reno was wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, turned on his side away from Rude to face his side of the bed, and so Rude sighed, grabbed his jacket for insulation, and willed sleep to come.

Rude woke to a pool of drool on his chest, and a Reno sprawled over the length of the bed – and Rude. Left leg off the bed, the redhead face down and snoring steadily, Rude contemplated shifting Reno off of him, but didn't want to risk aggravating any injuries.

Rude sighed and stayed in that position for another two hours till Reno woke up.

By the third day, Rude was tempted to sneak a copious dose of _Curaga_ into Reno's food, just to hasten the recovery, side-effects be damned. But then Rude thought about all the side-effects that weren't even materia-caused.

Rude decided he could wait, as he watched Reno burp and spit out his cereal on the ground, throwing his head back and laughing hysterically at the spit stains on the floor.

On the fourth night, Reno wouldn't settle peacefully under the covers until Rude smelt his toes, because Reno was _sure_ there was something off about those toes, and that they smelt like oranges.

"But they can't smell like em' oranges, it just ain't right," Reno stared up at Rude from where he was seated on the bed, eyes the size of saucers, and begged and pleaded until Rude gave in and gave a whiff.

Sometime along the week, that relapse of fever that the doctor promised made its appearance, leaving Reno a vomiting, weak, shuddering mess. Rude knelt by his side next to the waste paper basket, holding his hair back. Rude then had the same waste paper basket thrown at him a few hours later, Reno yelling and throwing a hissyfit when he found out that Rude had snuck his fever medication into his candy.

It wasn't till six days later that Rude was back living in his own home, Reno well enough to be given small doses of materia to mend his bones and be nursed back to full health. It was on the seventh day that Reno sauntered into the Turks' shared office, EMR resting on his shoulder, bandages all gone except for the one around his thigh.

"Had a great week with me, partner?" Reno asked from across the room, accompanied by a saucy wink and tilt of the head. "Fun times, eh? Should do it every weekend," he added, just as Elena ran over to give him a hug.

Rude picked up Tseng's coffee mug and hurtled it at the side of Reno's head.


End file.
